


Priority

by scioscribe



Category: Mission: Impossible (Movies)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Solitary Confinement, Touch-Starved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-19
Updated: 2019-05-19
Packaged: 2020-03-08 03:18:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18886102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scioscribe/pseuds/scioscribe
Summary: Hunley had—regrettably—talked to Ethan Hunt in any number of terrible aftermaths.  He’d sat in Washington with a headset on listening to Ethan in Ankara stitching up a knife wound across his stomach; he’d been there in person in Brussels when Ethan had been beat to hell.  He’d never heard him this raw.





	Priority

**Author's Note:**

  * For [simplecoffee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/simplecoffee/gifts).



> Your treat, should you choose to accept it... 
> 
> Brief mention of intentionally disordered eating (skipping meals).

Ethan was jumpy and fragile, like all the connections inside him had been stripped down and rewired.  He kept tapping his fingers against his thumb: index, middle, ring, pinky, and then back again.  Hunley had heard the call he’d put in to come home and he’d known just from his voice that something was right; he’d known enough to come himself, but he still hadn’t expected _this_.

“What the hell happened, Ethan?”

Ethan jerked his head up and looked around, almost like he was confirming he was still in the same car he’d been in for the last half hour.  He’d done that on the plane, too, that rapid-fire double-check of his surroundings before lapsing back into total disregard.  “Sir?”

There was a throb of alarm there.  Hunley had—regrettably—talked to Ethan Hunt in any number of terrible aftermaths.  He’d sat in Washington with a headset on listening to Ethan in Ankara stitching up a knife wound across his stomach; he’d been there in person in Brussels when Ethan had been beat to hell.  He’d never heard him this raw.

So Hunley lowered his voice, kept the words soft.  “You’ve been deep undercover for three months, working without a safety net.  You’ve always found a way to contact me before.  I wasn’t—prepared for you to drop off the grid for quite this long.”  He’d been worried, he meant, though that didn’t hold a candle to how worried he was now.  “Just take me through what happened.  You were establishing your alias with Holt.”

Ethan worked his jaw up and down.  Stretching the muscles, Hunley realized, as if he hadn’t done much talking lately.  “I—I needed access.  Holt has a very opaque network, and only one man he trusts to do his hiring.  Someone he knows very well, someone I couldn’t impersonate.  I had to—ingratiate myself with that man, Lester Devries, but he was—is—in prison.  So I got myself arrested.”

“Naturally,” Hunley said, only barely sarcastic.

If Ethan registered any humor there—registered anything beyond Hunley’s questions and his own obligation to respond—he didn’t show it.  He sounded robotic.  “I contrived a scenario where I could save Devries, or at least appear to.  Lit the fuse on a riot and, in the chaos, made him think he owed his life to me.”

“Did it work?”

Ethan hitched his chin in a semi-nod.  “I can put in an appearance with Holt at any time and be assured of a good welcome.”  He went quiet again.

Hunley wanted to put a hand on his shoulder, to give him some kind of support, but he had no idea what touching Ethan in this moment would lead to, had no idea how Ethan would react.  He knew he didn’t have the whole story.  Ethan could have managed that feat in a few days; his story didn’t account for three months worth of missing time.  But he didn’t like asking questions that Ethan could only answer on autopilot.

So—Ethan was his priority right now.  He recalibrated.  He knocked on the partition and told the driver they had a change of destination.  Home.

“I’m home already,” Ethan said.  He’d turned his gaze out the window.  “This is Washington.”

“Not home as in the city, Ethan, home as in _my_ home.  You’re clearly in no condition to be alone, and I’m—concerned about you.”  For a variety of reasons, some of which he could even have voiced without embarrassment.

To his surprise, that actually provoked a shadow of a smile.  “Yeah.  ‘Not alone’ sounds good.  Thank you.”

And there was something he really should have realized already.  “After the riot, they put you in solitary.  You couldn’t make your escape until they moved you back to the general population.  –No, you could have, of course you could have, but you wanted to verify your status with this Devries.”

“I needed to know.”

“My God, Ethan.  Three months?”

Three months without sun, air, sound, touch.  Hunley couldn’t imagine him in that kind of box. 

“Devries got a message to me,” Ethan said, “before I ever got back out.  I left then—yesterday.  You’re the first person I’ve talked to, sir.”

Hunley cleared his throat.  He didn’t know that he was well-suited for that role, particularly, but he couldn’t deny there was something oddly flattering about it.  “Then I’m sorry I’m not a better conversationalist.”

Ethan didn’t seem to hear him.  “I didn’t need extraction.  I could have gone on from there to find Holt.  Why did I call you?”

“Because you spent three months in hell,” Hunley said.  He wasn’t going to take any argument on this.  “And because some gratifyingly sensible part of you knew that I’d expect you to call for extraction for that, not just to check in.  I expected it back in Ankara when you almost got gutted—not that you were willing to comply—and I expect it now.  We can table Holt.  You need time to reacclimate.”

He had what he supposed was the nuclear option, which he was willing to deploy if necessary.  Not suspension, because Ethan was certainly capable of ignoring that—they’d started off with Ethan being hunted down and disavowed, he doubted administrative leave was going to make much of an impact—but telling him bluntly that he wasn’t up to the job.  And that was true.  Ethan was the best field agent Hunley had ever known, but the sad truth was that right now a prime target like Holt would make mincemeat of him.  He was exhausted and skittish and indifferent.

Ethan would understand that reasoning, and Hunley would use it if he had to, but he didn’t want to see Ethan at his lowest and set him down even lower.  And he wanted Ethan to just accept that he could rest.

His questionable luck, then, that Ethan wasn’t in any state to put up much of a fight.  He just went back to looking out the window.

* * *

“Big house,” Ethan said when they arrived.  He kept touching things—an oak bannister, a silver picture frame, a brass inlay, a velvet curtain.

“That’s CIA Director money,” Hunley said.  “I took a considerable pay cut coming over.  Thank God the mortgage was already paid off.”

He took his coat off, trying to think through what came next in all this.  It had been a long time since he had played host for anyone, and he’d certainly never done it for a damaged IMF agent with sensory deprivation, one who seemed like he might start rolling around on the floor at any moment to feel the rug.  One for whom his feelings were occasionally—less than professional.

“Luther’s still in Malaysia, I know.  But if there’s anyone else you’d prefer to stay with, I could check on their status.”

He’d been trying to be considerate—hell, he’d been trying to be appreciative of the fact that he, nursing along a surely one-sided attraction, was maybe not who Ethan would have chosen to look after him if all the cards had been on the table—but Ethan flinched.

“I could just go home, sir.  I don’t need someone to keep an eye on me.”

Hunley didn’t believe that at all.  “Well, whether you do or not, confine yourself for the moment to choosing between staying with me and staying with someone else.”

Ethan started doing that finger-thumb tapping again.  Hunley wondered how many times he had done that in solitary to focus himself, to create a kind of self-propelled metronome.  “I’d just as soon stay here, sir.”  He met Hunley’s eyes for the first time since Hunley had picked him up, and Hunley was relieved to see a spark of life there.  “Since you actually offered.  As opposed to just inflicting myself on someone.”

Hunley rolled his eyes.  “Yes, you’re a plague.  I’m sure you’re a terrible houseguest, with your ability to get in and out of buildings without leaving a trace behind.”  He checked his watch.  “Have you eaten?”

He hadn’t.  Hunley’s cooking repertoire was fairly limited—he probably spent almost as little time in his home as Ethan spent in his own—but his housekeeper could always be relied on to keep the kitchen stocked in case he did wash up on his own doorstep some night.  He made omelets, loading Ethan’s in particular down with everything he could scrape up—cheese and ham and diced peppers and tomatoes.  Ethan raised his eyebrows a little when Hunley slid it across the counter to him.

“This is three inches thick,” he said.

“I can almost see your ribs through your shirt,” Hunley said.  “Overkill seemed necessary.”

“So my mission, should I choose to accept it, is to eat my way through the world’s largest omelet.”  He made a start on it.  “This is good, sir.”

“I’ll consider another career change to short-order cook.”

He finished making his own and joined Ethan at the counter.  It was strange to be standing there with him, leaning forward, the warm yellow light of his kitchen on Ethan’s face with its new thinness, its new shadows.

He’d gotten sickly pale.  Maybe the word for how Hunley felt about him wasn’t attraction, really, not at the moment, not when he looked so waxen and unlike himself.  Maybe he was in deeper waters here than the word _attraction_ really implied.

Hunley said, “Do you want to talk about it?”

Ethan’s defenses were instantly back up.  “Which part?”

“Any of it.”  He evaluated that closed-off expression and sighed.  “Ethan, I’m not assessing you to see if you’re fit for duty.  I’m asking as a friend.  I know we’re short on backyard barbecues and nights out at the bowling alley, and I spent several months trying to have you shot, but I do think of you as a friend.  I’d at least prefer it if you didn’t treat me like an enemy.”

That ghost of a smile again.  “Fair enough.”  Ethan took another bite of his omelet.  “They weren’t starving me, for the record.  The food wasn’t good, it wasn’t fresh, and it wasn’t a lot, but it was there.  Not eating it sometimes, staying hungry, that was just something I could do to make one day different from the other.  Besides, after a while, nothing really had a taste anymore.”

He pressed his hand against the marble countertop, spreading out his fingers.

“This is different,” Ethan added.  “I can taste this, in case you were wondering.’

“You said it was good.  I’m sure an agent of your fine moral caliber would never lie to a superior.”  He smiled a little.  “So I never doubted you.  I’m glad to have you back.”

Ethan seemed to be studying him.  “Glad to be back with you, sir.”  He kept his hand where it was, pinned against the counter like he was holding onto it for dear life.

Hunley finally guessed at the weight of that loneliness, at the lack of human contact Ethan had been trying to fill since they’d arrived.  He’d been substituting one thing in for another: marble and velvet and wood and silver in place of skin.

He settled his hand down over Ethan’s.

Ethan closed his eyes, sucking in a deep breath.

Hunley couldn’t be sure if that was panic or pleasure, and either would have made sense.  “Is this what you wanted?”

Ethan nodded.  His voice a little shaky, he said, “It’s just been a while since I felt anything that could feel me too.  And the last time I did was technically in the riot, so it wasn’t ideal.”

“I realize this isn’t either.”

Ethan lifted his fingers up a little, interlacing them with Hunley’s before Hunley really processed what was happening.  “Only because of the situation.  Otherwise, sir, when I’m not half-dead, when I can follow A to B again, I could get used to this.”

However he had imagined his day going, this had certainly never featured.  He didn’t want to let go and could see easily enough now that Ethan didn’t want him to, so he returned the pressure of Ethan’s hold on him, moving only to put his other hand on the back of Ethan’s neck.

“I need a haircut,” Ethan said.

“I’m going to charitably assume this is you getting sidetracked from A to B and not an actual priority.”

“Definitely a sidetrack.”

“You feel good,” Hunley said.  He eased his fingers through Ethan’s hair, marveling at him a little.

“ _This_ feels good.”  He leaned his head back into Hunley’s hand.

It was a baffling responsibility, having Ethan Hunt rest against him, even for a moment.  He couldn’t even parse the amount of trust that must take, after what Ethan had been through, or how lucky he was to have it, after everything that had happened between them before they had ever even met.

It wasn’t something he took lightly.  It wasn’t even something he was willing to let be drowned out by how impossible it was for this to be happening.

“How are you?” he said softly.  “Really?”

Ethan opened his eyes again.  That calculating look was back, but it was diminished, at least.  He offered Hunley a small, crooked smile.  “Being out in the open made me want to find a place to hole up, get away from all the noise, the lights.  The car had me in a cold sweat like I was going to get locked into it.  I’d say right now everything’s a little overwhelming.”

And that coming from a man who wrestled helicopters in midair.  “Stay here, Ethan.  Take some time.”

Ethan stayed, moving only to turn his head so that Hunley’s fingers grazed his lips.  “Can’t think of anywhere I’d rather be.”


End file.
